Oh, crossing family, it is so good to be with you.
I love you. I love this church, and I am
incredibly thankful to God for the incredible work that He is
doing in this church and through you in this season.
It is really special to be a part of it.
I want to welcome those of you joining from all of our
different locations as well as those of you who are watching
online and those of you who are watching inside.
I also want to welcome those of you who are joining us for the
first time or the first time in a long time.
And what I would encourage you to do, and I know this might
sound crazy, but I would encourage you to take advantage
of the QR code on the seat in front of you and visit our new
here booth in all of our lobbies or our Next Step booth because
we want a chance to get to know you a little bit better.
I'm going to give you the title to my message.
The title of my message is how could you turn to your neighbor,
look at him in the face and say, how could you Now?
You probably did it sweet. What I need you to do is I need
you to channel that judgmental woman in your life where you
look down the nose. How could you turn to your other
neighbor and give him the condescending?
How could you? Recently, Jennifer and I, some
of you are too good at this, OK? Some of you like I was.
I was built for this. Recently, Jennifer and I went on
a trip to gather with a bunch of pastors from around the country.
And that means that I had to fly.
And I am, you can tell by looking at me I was not built
for airplanes. The they don't airplanes don't
come in Clayton size. OK.
And I got to be honest with you, as much as Jennifer and I try to
be really good Christians, when we get in an area where there's
mass transportation, we get a little judgy.
And that is exactly what was happening as we were sitting in
the airport that we were going to kind of a, a challenging
place to get to from Saint Louis.
So we had to fly. Then you have to get out and
wait for a while or rush and then you have to fly again.
And while you're doing that, you start looking at people and you
observe things. And the only thought that kept
going through my head was how could you give you a couple
examples? We're sitting there eating some
food and there is a guy there with some kind of dog.
I don't know if it is a a therapy dog or a service animal
dog, but it was a full size Pitbull.
And I'm thinking to myself of all the therapy dogs or of all
of the service dogs you could pick.
You can get like if you need a cute little cuddly poodle to sit
on your lap just to I'm not doing well.
I feel so much better now. You got, you got little poodle
dogs, you got like the happy golden retriever who just can't
wait to be super helpful. You got the the standard black
lab who's just ready to be there and everybody wants to come up
and pet. Or of all the dogs, how could
you possibly pick a full size pit bull that is going to go on
the plane and sit next to somebody else's crotch in the
plane? I'm sitting next to a pit bull
and now I need a therapy dog, right?
How could of all the dogs, how could you pick that one?
I go into the restroom. Guys, you're going to track with
me. I go into a airport public
restroom. A guy is in the urinal with his
hand. I've never seen this before.
I'm not looking anything else. I can just see his hand is on
the top part of the urinal, full touch, all 5 fingers.
He gets ready to sneeze, lifts his hand off of the urinal, puts
it back on the urinal. At this point, I'm fully
invested. I'm letting other people go past
me so I can keep judging. This guy, he gets done.
Does he wash his hands? If you think he washed his
hands, raise your hand. I got a bridge to sell you.
This guy did not wash his hands and he just walked out.
How could you let me say this, Christians, you should always
have a wet hand When you shake somebody's hand, Midwest people,
we, we feel so bad. We're like, I, I just washed my
hands. I was in the restroom.
I want to give you a kiss because you know what that means
that you are a normal human being.
It's when you shake someone's hand, you just got out of the
bathroom and it is dry as a bone.
You're dirty, right? You just I'm not OK now can and
I'm how could you possibly do this?
Then we go to get on the plane and Jennifer and I don't make
first class money. OK?
So what we rely on is the exit row because I am 6 foot six, 280
lbs and I don't fit anywhere else.
I don't get up in planes all right, no matter how long it is.
I'm not going to the bathroom. I get in my seat.
I put my head. I have to have the the window
seat. So I have a place to put my head
because the backrest stops about 7 vertebrae down.
So I'm trying to put my head and it has no place to go.
And if you've never rode in the exit row, it is designed for big
poor people. That is who the exit row is
designed for. And there'll be some bougie
little girl who's like, oh, I want to send the exit row so I
can, you know, kick, you know, air.
And they put everybody in there. And then there's a special thing
that happens the, the person who's on the plane.
I don't know if you're allowed to call them stewardesses or
what they're called now, but the, the person who works there.
And if you are a stewardess and that's not what you're supposed
to say. I mean, no ill will.
I just your name tag doesn't come with who you are
organizationally on it. And they, they, they look at
everybody and they say, hey, guys, in the event that this
thing goes down, you're in charge of opening up the exit
wing doors. And, you know, if you're,
there's any reason why you can't do that, we need to know and
there's some responsibilities. Please make sure you look at the
pamphlet and understand this is, we're on a, you know, 730-7800
A, and there's some rules applied.
They're going to know this. And then I need verbal
confirmation. And they go down and they make
everybody do the verbal confirmation.
But what they don't do is let the rest of the plane vote on
whether or not we want this idiot to be the one who opens
the door. I sit there and I'm like, I'm
going to knock her out and him out and then I'm opening the
door. They don't even they don't even
lift up the pamphlet. I'm the only one who lifts up
the pamphlet because I'm a good Christian.
I sit there and I go, this is a new plane.
I've never had to open it. But if I do, did you know that
you're supposed to do it differently if there's a fire?
Did you know you're supposed to do it differently if there is?
If you're on water, did you know that your side doesn't actually
come with the automatically deflated slide that comes out?
That's only for the people in the very front of the plane, the
1st classers or the people in the back.
US, we have to fight back into the middle of the aisle, lift
the the the thing out, shove it out there, attach it to the
wings. There's wing mounts.
But nobody in the row knows any of this.
I'm sitting there like I'm going to kill people before I save
people. And I'm thinking of all the
plight of all the flight stuff they take you through.
How could you not let other people vote on whether or not we
want this kid with his Earpods in who's not even listening, who
just said, yeah, sure, yes, sure is not going to cut it anyhow,
how could you? But this was the best one of
all. And OK, now listen, I'm, I'm
going to I'm going to reference COVID.
Just please don't lose your mind.
We were in the airport and there were a a couple parents there
who were mask wearers in 2024, which you're fine.
Some people fell in love with them.
I didn't. But if you did, it's great.
I don't know what else was going on.
So you can tell. Hey, give them space.
They're definitely nervous about getting sick and they may had a
really special reason, like they might have been going to see
somebody they love and they don't.
So like, I get it. So you got these two people who
are being very particular. However, they had kids with them
who were crawling on the airport floor and licking the tires of
the stroller. And I'm there, I'm going
Jennifer's like bruising my knee, like just keeps these two
people are pulling their mask down to take the little bite of
their bagel and then putting their mask back.
I meanwhile, the kid is just licking the tire and I'm going,
how? How could you?
Like I said, you just want to scream sometimes to people.
How could you? And I think you're going to be
thinking the exact same thing when we find ourselves in the
text today. For those of you who are here
for the first time or the first time in a long time, we are.
You're maybe even missed the last couple of weeks.
We are in a sermon series called Decisions in the Desert.
Every single one of us are going to find ourselves at some point
in time in the desert. And the decisions that you make
in the desert will define you. They will determine your
destiny. And during this series we were
looking at one of the most famous stories in all of
scripture and one of the most referenced stories in all of
scripture. The story is the story of Moses
and the Israelites being delivered out of bondage and
slavery in Egypt, journeying through the desert and into the
promised land that God had provided for them.
Quick recap, in order to free them, God demonstrated 10
plagues, the 10th of which was the death of the first born,
which is where we get the Passover, which paints a
beautiful picture of what Jesus did on our behalf.
Then the Israelites, they leave Egypt, but they do so by
plundering the Egyptians. The Egyptians give them all of
their wealth, all of their gold, all of their possessions.
Then the Israelites find themselves in front of the Red
Sea, and the Egyptians change their mind and are chasing after
them. This is Jerry's message last
week, which was an incredible message.
If you haven't watched it, you should.
And God parts the Red Sea, delivers the Israelites, and
then eliminates the Egyptian oppressors.
Then as the Israelites are following through the desert,
they are guided by a pillar of fire by night, which gives them
warmth in the desert cool of the evening, as well as it gives
them light. And during the day they follow a
pillar of cloud which provides them shade from the desert sun
and also gives them a guide to follow.
Then they get to a place where they are ready to drink, because
obviously if you're going through a desert, you're going
to need some water to drink. And they find a place that has
water after three days of no water, and the water is bitter.
It is undrinkable. God tells Moses how to solve the
issue and he turns the bitter water sweet and makes it
drinkable by throwing a piece of wood in it.
The people become hungry and God makes a promise to them that
every morning there will be mana on the ground for them to pick
up. It will form like dew on the
grass, and every night there will be quail birds meat for
them to eat. So every day God provided them
with mana in the morning and quail in the evening to supply
all of their food needs. Then they journey a little bit
further into the desert and again they have run out of water
and God tells them to speak to the rock and that the rock will
flow out water. And you think, oh that's really
cool, water starts seeping out of a rock.
You would be wrong. The water supply of this large
mass of people would have been about four to 6,000,000 gallons
of water every day. So when water comes out of a
rock, it is not trickling like out of your bathroom faucet.
It is a geyser of water for you to drink.
Let me put this in perspective. If you would sent your kid to
crossing camp this year, this is the lake at crossing camp.
We don't have a great name for it.
We should name it one day. This is our lake.
If that lake was 8 feet deep, that would be the water
requirements of the Israelites every single day.
When water comes out of the rock, it is no small miracle.
They journey further along and they arrive in the desert of
Sinai. This would be modern day Egypt
or Saudi Arabia. And it is here that God invites
Moses up onto the mountain, Mount Sinai to speak to Moses
and to give him the law. Now we're going to unpack what
happens after that. Over the next couple of weeks,
we're going to dive into the law.
And I know what you're thinking. Oh my goodness.
We're going to start talking about the parts of the Bible
that I ignore in my Bible reading plan.
And what I want to tell you is, is I think we're going to take
one of the parts of the Bible that you think is the worst part
of the Bible and turn it into one of your favorite parts of
the Bible if you show up. So Moses goes up on the mountain
and why he is on top of the mountain, things get really,
really bad down at the bottom. Think about how you felt after
last week's message. You probably felt a little
encouraged. You probably felt a little
energized. You felt a little bit excited.
You felt a little joyful. And that's completely true.
And it changes so stinking fast in the text.
You go from the high of highs to the low of lows.
And sometimes I've noticed that that's what happens to us, too.
We have this incredible experience, followed by a very
dark season. Moses is on top of the mountain.
He is getting the words from God himself.
He's getting the 10 commandments as well as some other ones.
This is how it opens up Exodus chapter 20.
And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God, who
brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything
in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters below.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord
your God, am a jealous God. Well, I want you to remember
that because at this exact moment, the mountain where Moses
is hearing from God feels alive to all of the people that are
down below. It's as if the mountain is
breathing. This is a picture of what it
would have felt like. There was Thunder and there was
lightning and there was a thick cloud of smoke inhabiting the
top part of the mountain. And the people were amazed that
something was happening. They didn't know what was
happening. They couldn't see what was
happening. They just knew that Moses was up
on the mountain with God and they were in the valley below.
And while Moses is getting this incredible word from God up top,
something is stirring down below.
Exodus chapter 32 verses one through 6.
When the people saw that Moses was so long, everybody say so
long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around
Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us.
As for this fellow Moses who has who brought us out of Egypt, we
don't know what has happened to him.
Aaron answered them. Take off the gold earrings that
your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring
them to me. So all the people took off their
earrings and brought them to Aaron.
He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the
shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.
Then they said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up
out of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an
altar in front of the calf and announced tomorrow there will be
a festival to the Lord. So the next day the people rose
early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented
fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat
and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Revelry is a very Christian way of saying they partied
incredibly hard. Can you see what's happening?
God is talking to Moses on the mountain, saying, I am the Lord
your God who brought you out of Egypt.
You shall have no other gods before me, of nothing in the
heavens above, the earth, or the waters below.
And while that exact same thing is happening down in the valley,
the people are doing the exact opposite.
They are building an idol. They are giving credit to that
idol for the work that God has done.
And as I read these verses, there are at least 4 failures
that jump off the page that make me want to look at the
Israelites and go how could you? I know you're experiencing some
hardship, I know you're experiencing some temptation.
But how could you? Look what it says in First
Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13. No temptation has overtaken you
except what is common to mankind.
I need to give you a mini devotional thought.
There are going to be moments where you're going to be tempted
to walk off the path that God has charted for you and you're
going to be tempted to go. The temptation was just too
much. But you need to know that there
has never been a temptation that has come upon you that is beyond
your power through God to overcome.
But the Israelites down in the valley do just that in at least
four ways. The first area where they
struggle is impatience. They become frustrated at the
timing of God. And I want to go, how could you?
You're like 40, you're 80 days into the deliverance.
You've experienced God's deliverance for 49 days by my
calculation, and Moses has been up on the mountain for just 40
days and you're already tired of waiting on God.
They're already tired of waiting on him, waiting on Moses.
Or maybe they were just tired of being anxious because they
didn't feel right having their leader absent for such a long
time. I got to be honest here.
If you were to talk to those closest to me on staff and to my
friends and family and you were to list what are the top three
things that Clayton gets, you know, an F at it would be
patience. Microwaves take too long to make
my food. I'm like, do I really 2 minutes?
What am I going to do when I get done eating at a restaurant?
I get up like, it's time to go, guys, what are we?
What are we just going to waste our lives here?
And so now my friends will order coffee and I'm like, can I just
go? Can you give Jennifer a ride
home? When I'm done, I'm done.
I just, I'm just hard wired. When I pull into a restaurant
that serves fast food and has a drive through, if the drive
through line is too long, guess what I do?
I go inside and I pick a car before I do like I'm going to
beat that car out of this parking lot.
Yeah. You may remember a sermon I
preached a long time ago at the beginning of the year called
There has to be a place. And the tagline in one of those
sermons was there has to be a place that gives people.
Time. That sermon had zero to do with
you. That sermon had everything to do
with me trying to live a life with the Holy Spirit because the
fruit of the Holy Spirit produces patience.
What do you do when God's timing is not your timing?
What do you do? Question Is there an area in
your life right now where you are frustrated because you feel
like you've been waiting on God for way too long?
When you find yourself in that spot, I think there are at least
two additional temptations when you are frustrated and you're
trying to wait on God. The first one is to start
believing that God doesn't exist.
The second temptation is to believe that He exists, but to
doubt who He is. He doesn't hear my prayers.
He doesn't care. He's not going to come through.
The second temptation is to figure out a way to do it on
your own power and your own strength.
When you're tired of waiting on God, you decide to take matters
into your own hands. You start to believe that God's
way isn't the best way, and that your way might actually be the
best way to accomplish the thing that God wants you to do.
The problem is, is you cannot accomplish godly things on human
power. This is where we get tempted to
go Well, the ends just justify the means.
I'll accomplish the godly thing. I'll just do it on my own power
and my own strength. For those of you who've been
around your Bible for a long, long time, I'm just going to
give you a little bit of a reference to a story and you're
going to go, Oh my goodness, that's exactly what happened.
God promised Abraham that a great generation would flow out
of him and his relationship with his wife, Sarah.
However, the promise took a lot longer to come about than they
thought. And so they had a really good
idea. This is what their great idea
was. Their great idea was it was
actually the woman's idea, which women sometimes have horrible
ideas. She said to her husband, hey,
how about you take my servant and you just have a kid with her
to fulfill the promise that God made for us.
And Abraham goes, I think that sounds like a great idea.
Sometimes guys have really bad ideas, and so he does it and he
ends up having a kid with the woman he's not supposed to have
a kid with because he had sex with somebody he wasn't supposed
to have sex with. And the idea was his wife and
women have horrible ideas and he followed her idea, which is also
not a good idea. And then I'm just going to cut
you off. Surprise, guys, guess what?
The wife actually got upset that the husband did what she told
him to do and didn't like what he'd actually done when he had
done it. I just read my Bible, folks.
I just read the Bible. You know what they were doing.
They were trying to accomplish the will of God in their own
power and their own strength with their own ideas because
they got frustrated waiting on God.
Where is an area in your life right now where you are
frustrated in the waiting? You're tempted to do it your own
way. The second thing that I believe
the Israelites did is they had a desire to go back, then went
back to their old way of thinking, their old way of
operating. For 400 years they've been in
captivity in Egypt. And guess what?
The Egyptian, one of the gods the Egyptians worshipped, they
worshipped an image that they had fashioned out of themselves
and you're going, how could you do it?
For the Egyptians, they worshipped a cow God named
Hathor was a goddess of love. The image a calf God has just
taken them out of the Egypt and they go back to worshipping the
gods that they were surrounded by in captivity.
And if those gods were so good to you, how come you were in so
much captivity? But as soon as things don't
start going the right way, they go back to Egypt.
This is the fatal flaw of the Egyptians.
They were out of Egypt, but Egypt wasn't out of them.
How many times have you and I done the exact same thing for
me? Too many to count.
When things don't go our way, we want to go back.
We have officially left the things that were hurting us,
that were breaking us down, that were causing us pain, that were
keeping us from our purpose, the things that were keeping us from
Our Calling. And then the moment things don't
go the way we want them to go, we go back to the very things
that were hurting us. The very things that were
keeping us in isolation, the very things that were pulling us
down, the very things that were robbing us of who God created us
to be. And we walk away from the
goodness of God. The moment following God gets
hard three different times at this point in the story, the
Egyptians are the Israelites have said, why did we come all
the way out here? It would be better for us to go
back. And how many times in your walk
with Christ have you left the old way, started walking in the
new life that he has provided for you?
And deep down inside, when things start to get tough, you
want to walk away completely. We've left the emotions and the
attitudes and the and the activities that were keeping us
in bondage. And we walk away from the
goodness of life with Christ. And the moment there's
adversity, we just want to go back.
The third thing I see happening there is Aaron gives in.
And Aaron is supposed to be the leader of these people.
And I want to scream. And Aaron, how could you?
You've been the mouthpiece of God.
Miracles have been performed by your hands, and the moment the
people around you turn their affections away from God, you
help them commit the sin. You were supposed to call them
back to God, but you actually participate in their rebellion.
Where Aaron? Where is your holy boldness?
Where Aaron is your courage, your commitment, your strength?
Where is it? And yet at the same time, how
many times have we done the same thing?
How many times have we known somebody, seen somebody do the
exact same thing? Too many times.
You and I have heard stories of people leaving the church,
giving in to the pressure of Satan, and just walking away
from the bride of Christ completely.
And they leave because they come up with their reason.
Things just aren't going the way they're supposed to go.
And other people join them in it.
Sometimes they'll say, hey, I'm not, I'm not going to go back.
Because, you know, all the hypocrites are at church.
And I mean, I've heard that, you know, 10,000 times.
And deep down inside, we want to tell them that's not true.
There's not hypocrites of the church.
But deep down inside, we know what's really true, which is
we're all a bunch of hypocrites. And so how do we tell them that
they're right when they're actually wrong?
I'll tell you, you've been here at church before you.
You know your level of hypocrisy.
You're super fired up for Jesus on a Thursday or on a Sunday,
and then you're an absolute troll in the office on Monday
and you're a Jack wagon to your family on a Tuesday.
And so when they say, you know, I'm not going back to the church
because the hypocrites, you're like, yeah, you're actually
pretty much thinking right on. So let me just give you some
coaching if you want some coaching.
If somebody ever brings up the hypocrite, talk to you here.
You could channel your inner Clayton.
Here is what I would say to somebody who says I'm not going
to church because of all the hypocrites.
I would say, just so you know, we don't worship us at our
church. We worship Jesus and we know
we're not perfect. We just know that he is and we
know that we fail and he never has.
And so if you were thinking that when you came to this church,
you were supposed to worship us, that was never the intention.
We were pointing you to him who's perfect in absolutely
every single way. And then I'll probably gently,
maybe double down, I would say, so where do you get gas?
They'd be like, what do you mean?
You know what do you mean? Well, I just want you to know
that when I go to fill my car up with gas, I don't avoid a gas
station because there's hypocrites getting gas.
I go there for the same reason everybody else does.
I need gas. I don't, hey, I can't shop at
that grocery store. There's fat people in there
eating in the unhealthy aisles. I don't do that.
How many of you have ever got a prescription from a fat Doctor
Who says you need to lose weight?
I don't sit there and go, hey, fatty, no, you know what I say?
You're probably stinking, right? So when I'm in a grocery store,
I don't go, hey, there's no there's a bunch of hypocrites
here. I can't get my food here.
I'm there for the same reason they're there.
I'm hungry and I need food. You know what?
When I'm sick, I don't say I'm not going to the hospital
because there's a bunch of sick people there.
I go there because there's other sick people there.
And you know why the other sick people are there?
Because they want to get better too.
So let me tell you something. I don't avoid church because the
people there are jacked up. I go to church for the same
reason everybody else goes to church, because I need saved.
I need forgiven, I need healed, I need redeemed, I need
repurposed. I need to be connected to him.
If I'm waiting for you to be a bunch of perfect people before I
can go to church, that's crazy. And no other area of your life
do you operate like that. But Satan will sow a seed of
stupid into somebody's heart, and they'll just live there
until somebody squashes it. So I squashed it. 4th mistake
that they make. OK, that's great.
Thank God bless you. All right, the fourth thing they
do is they misuse, and this one is the most devastating in my
opinion, of all. They take the jewelry out of
their ears and they make an idol out of it.
And I want to scream at them, how could you?
Do you know how you got those earrings?
You were in bondage for 400 years.
You had no inheritance, no generational wealth, you have no
bank account, you had no possessions.
But God made the Egyptians favorable to you, and they gave
you what they had. Look what it says in Exodus
chapter 12. The Lord had made the Egyptians
favorably disposed towards the people, and they gave them what
they asked for. So they plundered the Egyptians,
the Israelites, after 400 years of nothing, plunder a wealthy
country, and they take the very blessing that God gave them, and
they use it to rebel against him.
And you want to scream at the text, How could you?
And before I do, I think I've done the very same thing.
God did not just redeem me out of my sin.
As He was doing so, He placed inside of me His Holy Spirit
which gives me gifts, talents and abilities.
I don't just get saved, He plunders heaven on my behalf and
instills in me a power and a gift and an ability that I do
not deserve. And yet I can easily take the
very things that He has blessed me with and use it to just bless
myself and not the people around me.
What does it look like when you take those blessings and you use
the blessings against them? Our our gift of leadership is
used for our own glory instead of His.
Our our wealth is used to expand our Kingdom instead of His.
Our connections are used to expand our business instead of
being in the business of pointing people to Jesus.
We do our good works to be seen by outsiders instead of to love
one another. Every time I read about the
Israelites, I just want to scream.
How could you? After all that you've seen,
after all that you've experienced, how could you?
How could you? After you saw God move in a
mighty way in the 10 plagues? How could you?
How could you after you plundered the Egyptians?
How could you? How could you after you crossed
the Red Sea on dry ground with a wall of water on your right and
a wall of water on your left? How could you?
How on the earth could you possibly rebel against God when
you are walking in a cloud of fire but or a pillar of cloud by
day and a pillar of fire by night?
How could you? How could you when there is
manna in the morning and there is quail in the evening?
How could you? How could you when you are
drinking from water that came out of a rock 4,000,000 gallons
a day? How well could you?
But Paul writes in Galatians chapter 5 verse 7, you are
running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you
from obeying the truth? And before I get too mad at the
Israelites, I end up looking at myself in the mirror and going,
How could you? Because you and I, we probably
do the same thing over and over and over again.
One of my weird quirks is when I go into people's houses, if they
have, you know, what I call stupid art on the wall, I read
it out loud as if I'm just saying it randomly.
So like, I'll be in someone's kitchen.
Like, people really don't know how much you care or care how
much you know until they know how much you care.
And my wife will just start looking around for the sign.
You know, we came into your house as friends, but we're
leaving his family. So it's just, I got this thing.
If I go to your house, I'm going to find something stupid that
you put on a wall. And I'm going to, I'm going to
say it like it's mine. So I was at a friend's house and
there was a sign on the wall. This what the sign reads.
I still remember praying for all the things I have now.
Can't you? You ever just looked back and
seen how he has actually been faithful at every turn?
I still remember praying for all the things I have now.
Oh, I don't have a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of
fire by night, but I have a long list of answered prayers.
He's been faithful at every turn.
He has never been on my timeline, but he has always been
on time. In fact, even when he was late,
he was still on time. He's always delivered.
He's always supplied. He has always come through and I
want to look at all of my failures and my missteps along
the way. There is not a single thing that
he has not redeemed and repurposed.
And I want to look at myself in the mirror and go, how could
you? Crossing family in this life,
you will experience times of waiting, times of hardship,
times of uncertainty. And the very last thing that you
want to do is walk away from the one who will get you through.
And you might be thinking that I preached this sermon and the
reason I titled it how could you is because I was thinking that
you and me were so bad. Nope, I titled it How could you?
Because I was thinking about Jesus.
Because if I could ask him any question, I would ask him.
How could you, in all of your perfectness, take on all of my
sin? How could you, knowing that I
would fail you over and over again?
How could you make your mercies new to me every single morning?
How could you, knowing that I would fail you, still give me
your Holy Spirit? How, knowing that I was going to
fail you, would you still be there for me at every turn?
I'm not looking at you and I'm not looking at me going How
could you? I'm looking at Him and going,
How could you be so good to me knowing I've been so bad?
We're moving to a time of decision.
If you are here today and you don't have a relationship with
Jesus Christ, I'm just going to be edgy with you for a second.
You are either following Jesus or you are following Satan.
There is no middle ground. Your life is either being
directed by God or your life is being directed by the enemy.
You either belong to God or you belong to Satan, and when you
die, you will go to the one that you belong to.
There is no middle ground. And if you were here today and
you've never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, don't put it off. Sometimes when I'm having
conversations with people who'll go, I want to say yes to Jesus.
I just know I'm going to screw up.
I want you to know God will not be surprised.
He's not going to like what? He knew you were going to sin.
He knew the sin you were going to commit.
He already decided in advance that He was going to put the
penalty of that sin on His Son before you ever committed that
sin. He is not surprised by that sin.
He sent His Son to save you from your sin.
And if you are waiting for you to be perfect to find a
relationship with him, if you're perfect, you don't need a
relationship with him. And I've said this 1000 times,
if you could fix you, he wouldn't have sent his son.
And if you're here today going, I know I'm going to fail in the
future, I want you to know you're right.
But you can get this thing right and you can get the most
important thing right. And the most important thing
that you can do is return you to Him and start an intimate
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
To those of you who are here and you've never started that, I'm
going to encourage you in just a few moments to walk right over
there underneath that screen next to another baptistry.
If you're watching online, there's going to be somebody
who's going to pop something up in the chat and start asking the
questions to start that relationship today.
If you're here today and you already have a relationship with
Jesus Christ, maybe we should spend just a little bit of time
owning the areas in our life where we have not been obedient.
Maybe there's an area where you've been, you've given,
you've given up on praying because you're tired of waiting
and you need to pray that prayer again.
Maybe there's an area of your life where you know you've been
misusing the blessings of God and you're going, it's time for
me to use what you've given me to advance your Kingdom.
Maybe you need to just get down on your knees and just thank God
for all the times He has come through for you.
Maybe you just need to spend some time asking him how could
you be so good to me? Would you stand with me?
God, I'm asking you to do a work.
A work that can't be attributed to the sermon, that can't be
attributed to this church, that can't be attributed to the
worship I'm asking you to do. A work that could only be
attributed to your spirit moving in US, convicting us, changing
us, challenging us into your image and your name.
I pray. Amen.